Beauty
Created by Morgan Sherlock Overview Beauty is traditionally defined as: "a combination of qualities, such as shape, color, or form, that pleases the aesthetic senses, especially the sight."http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/beauty "Beauty" in the sense that is discussed in Anne Wysocki's article "The Sticky Embrace of Beauty" is the abstract motivation and influence within media and advertising, which she argues has been conceptualized through an anti-feminist, patriarchal society that has remained stagnant in modern times. Definition and History Beauty is traditionally defined as: "a combination of qualities, such as shape, color, or form, that pleases the aesthetic senses, especially the sight." (dictionary.com) Wysocki takes this definition and puts it into a historical and cultural context to trace its rhetorical use in advertising and media to show how the word has come oppress women. She bases her argument by Kant's gendered conceptualization of aesthetics and beauty: primarily that judgements of beauty must be "disinterested" and are therefore "universal". This plays into the rhetorical aspect that Wysocki examines - she claims that the general (universal) notions of beauty created in the 1800's, a Western, patriarchal society, has grown to play into forcing women and "Others" into objectification in modern media. One of her main arguments against beauty is: "My very (learned) idea of what is beautiful, of what is well-formed, is dangerous for women and any aestheticized Others." (Wysocki 170) The word "beauty" is now stigmatized to oppress women into an aesthetic only to please Western white men - which, as we also see in Kant's definition (see under "Definition and History"), was considered the "universal" idea of what was considered aesthetically pleasing, or, "beautiful". History has complicated the definition and now beauty is used as rhetoric in advertising and media, as Wysocki claims in her discourse. Examples This picture is apart of an art project that demonstrates a woman's menstruation cycle - she posted it on Instagram and the app deleted her photo three separate times. While this photo, showing a woman naturally and in what society would claim is un-anesthetically pleasing, many photos on Instagram exploiting women for their bodies in a way that Wysocki claims is a result of this oppression of women through the idea of "beauty". This picture is a statement that closely follows and demonstrates Wysocki's argument about society's view of beauty and how it oppresses women and eliminates the possibility of "beauty" in a natural woman that is not exploited in a way that white Western men have valued for over 200 years. This advertisement of Kate Upton for Hardee's was attached to an article headlined: "Hardee's Hopes Male Viewers will Flip Over it's Sexy New Burger Ad" - becoming apart of a white, male and even heteronormative rhetoric. This is a similar add that Wysocki discusses in the beginning of her article when she talks about beauty and how she talks about how certain parts of the woman's body is specifically lightened to exploit specific parts of her body that has been claimed as "beautiful" by societal standards - in this picture, Upton's legs and breasts are specific points which catches the eye, and we are hardly able to understand how this is an advertisement for a fast-food burger chain. The woman's body becomes the selling piece of this portrait, resorting back to values of prostitution and misogynist ideals. "Beauty" is what sells, and this ad is an example of how that can be used to exploit and oppress women, dehumanizing them for only their bodies to look a very specific way generated by white male ideals. The Hawkeye Initiative is a movement created online to highlight the sexism that are commonly seen in comics, illustrated books, and video games. It originated on a the Tumblr account of Skjaldmeyja, and was then taken to create an entire blog where artists can freely submit their own renditions of the comic hero Hawkeye, or sometimes others, imitating women's poses in comics, "to illustrate how deformed, hyper-sexualized, and impossibly contorted women are commonly illustrated."The Hawkeye Initiative. http://thehawkeyeinitiative.com/faq. Resources and further reading http://new.artinstitutes.edu/blog/a-revealing-look-at-beauty-advertising. This article goes into specific depth about beauty in advertising, consumer expectations and reveals the eventual truth: advertisers are going after a psychological and societal desire for beauty and will manipulate (women) in anyway they can to sell. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10641734.2003.10505145#.VSNlkP2emIo. This article goes into a visual rhetoric model to show how gender affects how we look at different advertisements. http://www.businessinsider.com/18-ads-that-changed-the-way-we-think-about-women-2012-10. This list from Business Insider rightfully claims, "When people say that sex sells what they really mean is that sexy women sell." This is a look at new, modern ads that directly respond to this and go into how women through the years have tried to use advertising for a more feminist movement. https://sites.psu.edu/aaronkreiderrclblog/2013/10/11/rhetorical-analysis-of-dove-beauty-campaign/. This blog details the rhetorical effects of the Dove Women campaign, which takes an opposite approach to women typically in the media and promote women to be themselves. This goes into great detail about the specific rhetorical effectiveness of this ad. http://www.novelguide.com/reportessay/science/social-science/oppression-females-advertising. This site goes into a detailed observation of the history of the developed stereotypes against women that have come through by their oppression in advertising. Keywords "The Sticky Embrace of Beauty" by Anne Wysocki Rhetoric Culture Glamour Social Media Advertising Citations Britt, Darice. "A Revealing Look At Beauty Advertising." The Art Institutes. N.p., n.d. Web. . Felix, Samantha. "18 Ads That Changed How We Think About Women."Business Insider. N.p., n.d. Web. . Kreider, Aaron. "Rhetorical Analysis of Dove Beauty Campaign." Sites at Penn State. N.p., n.d. Web. . "The Oppression of Females in Advertising." Novelguide. N.p., n.d. Web. . Stafford, Maria, Nancy Spears, and Chung-Kue Hsu. "Celebrity Images in Magazine Advertisements: An Application of the Visual Rhetoric Model." Journal of Current Issues & Research in Advertising 25.2 (2003): n. pag. Web. Wysocki, Anne. ""The Sticky Embrace of Beauty"" Digital Literacies (n.d.): n. pag. Web. Category:Keyword